Eight dolphins are dead after they became stranded Tuesday morning on a Sea Isle City beach.
Two of the dolphins had died by early Tuesday afternoon in what the Brigantine-based Marine Mammal Stranding Center called a “mass stranding event” in a social media post. The organization later euthanized the remaining six dolphins, after a veterinarian assessed that “their conditions were rapidly deteriorating.”
“The decision was made to humanely euthanize the dolphins to prevent further suffering, as returning them to the ocean would have only prolonged their inevitable death,” the MMSC said.
The dolphins have since been taken to a lab for necropsies.
“We share in the public’s sorrow for these beautiful animals, and hope that the necropsies will help us understand the reason for their stranding,” the organization said.
The dolphins were reportedly found about 11 a.m. Tuesday around the 50th Street area of the beach. Before the center’s arrival at the scene, bystanders used buckets of water to keep the beached dolphins wet. Staff from the organization, as well as a veterinarian, arrived on the beach Tuesday afternoon, the center said in a post on social media. Sea Isle City police, EMS, fire and public works departments assisted the organization.
This incident comes amid heightened concern over the deaths of nearly two dozen whales found along beaches in New Jersey and New York since December. While some environmental groups have pointed to wind turbine farm projects off the New Jersey coast as a contributing factor in the deaths, scientists and government agencies have dismissed any connections between the two, with necropsies finding evidence of ship strikes in nearly half of the whales.
In January, Gov. Phil Murphy pushed back against concerns over the wind turbine projects’ role in the deaths, saying that whale deaths had been happening at an increased rate “long before there was any offshore wind activity” in the area. Murphy was citing research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has found that “no whale mortality has been attributed to offshore wind activities.”
Late last month, a dead bottlenose dolphin was found washed ashore in Avalon. MMSC staff also responded to that incident, saying that necropsy results could “take some time.”
